Losing You
by CLAMPwhore
Summary: [Ch 120 SPOILERS: Winter Cup Touou/Seirin game (!). Aomine POV. Rated M for sexual content & language. Past Aokuro/ implied KagaKuro.] / He dips to perform his little vanishing trick, and he thinks he's got this one- he thinks he's victorious already. His heart is beating with the adrenaline. I close my eyes, and I can feel it. I close my eyes, and it takes me back.


**[A/N: ****SPOILERS FROM CHAPTERS 120 – 139****: The Winter Cup Seirin vs Touou game. !  
**

_**The Vanishing drive fails on Aomine, ch20 pg 19. That page inspired almost this whole thing. Warning: this is a drabble(? isittho), kind of inner monologue from Aomine's POV... thing, throughout the game from that point on. Includes a flashback of Aokuro sex, and references to a past relationship. I'm still not sure whether this is KagaKuro or AoKuro, but regardless, I hope you enjoy, should you choose to read on. ]**_

* * *

Standing in the middle of the court.  
Despite the noise, it feels like the world is silent.  
Sweat creeps down my skin. I see it trailing down his, too.

I let my mouth take control, anything in order to win. I just say things; cruel, malicious personal attacks of the simplest kind, meant to knock him straight off the pegs that I know he's been working so tragically hard to climb up. I know him so well.

So I know how to cut him down.

I see it in his eyes: soft powder blue; hard determination. Hell if Tetsu isn't putting his soul into this, wearing his heart on his sleeve as usual.

He makes it all too easy for me to snatch it, crush it in my palm.

He's confident. He's always impressed me when he got like this: no longer just a shadow in the backseat of the operation, but a dangerous silhouette standing strong, making for an attack of his own.

It's impressive to look at, sure, but it's making me fucking _sick_.  
Why? Because I know I'm going to win. I always do. It never changes. So looking at that stance- _he's ready to take on the world on his small set shoulders, give his all for his team_- it's just plain sad. So meaningless - all that energy and emotion frittered away on some dream he's never gonna catch up to.

I catch sight of Kagami behind him, trigger the events on purpose.

It's kind of sad, and kind of funny. He dips to perform his little vanishing trick, and he thinks he's got this one, he thinks he's victorious already. His heart is beating with the adrenaline. I close my eyes, and I can feel it.

I close my eyes, and it takes me back.

* * *

_'Actions speak louder than words.'_

That's kind of the basis of our relationship, how it even works, since we disagree when we talk too much. Our personalities plain clash, no denying it.

But when it's like this, it's different.

We don't speak a single word, because there's no need to.

His fingers twitch, curling just the smallest bit. _He wants to hold my hand._ I let my fingers thread between his, watching as they slowly clasp together, his pale complexion against my own darker skin such a simple, but beautiful sight.

...He really is beautiful. Such a crappy, cliché word- too often wasted on things that don't even begin to scrape the real mark, leaving the true depth of meaning long washed out - but he really deserves it, I think, at least.

He's lying there under me in a sprawl of bare limbs, light skin and messy splayed hair, tangled in my bedsheets. The faint flush at his chest, running along his throat, streaked heavier across his cheeks, even spotting at the tips of his ears, looks like something from a dream. It's delicate, to suit his slight body.

He's _not_ delicate, though; appearances deceive. I know the power coveted in the arms that my hands slowly run down, pushing them up above his head. I know the skill of the fingers I grip in my own, sure and firm. The legs that I hook over my shoulders carry him nimble across the court, as he slips out of vision and blends into the background perfectly. He takes me into him, and it hurts him, but he does it anyway, nothing delicate about it.

We still don't say anything.

I press close, arm around his waist tugging him right against me, and I close my eyes. He barely makes a sound, hardly even a gasp, but he's still telling me everything I need to know.

I feel his breathing against me - when it shorts, I stop. I gauge if he's okay. When it's long and relaxed again, an easy swell of his chest against mine, I know that he is. We fall into our rhythm and the world washes clean away.

All the while the only things that can be heard are the shiff of the sheets, the sounds of our sex, and our breaths - mangled hot together as our lips get close. I can tell everything, exactly how he feels by his body under mine, by the rhythm of his breaths. As they get harsher, so heavy his voice just threatens to leak through, I feel closest to him. I know just how he feels, how I make him feel as he comes apart.  
That one, long breath of satisfaction: it's been a long while since I heard it.  
Too long.

Time passed, and we still don't need words. I never lost that sense, our connection, the same way that he never did.

* * *

My eyes are closed, but I feel him. I feel where he is, how he is, simply by his breath.  
And that's how I stop him.

That's how I take his hope, and throw it down to shatter at his feet, the hopes of every single member of his team crumbling down with it; anything, just to _win_.

* * *

The game is ours, naturally. There isn't even a minute left, under thirty seconds, and they've went and cornered themselves. Another win is on the tip of my tongue, but I won't shout when I do, because there's still no satisfaction in it - despite the good scare they gave us.

The ball is going out of bounds, and that's it for them. They're finished.

Only, they're _not_.

He _throws _himself, dives at the ball. The look in his eyes stuns me to a still. There's such a raw, wild will - a forceful determination beyond anything he's shown me, or Teikou, before. I can only watch as the ball flies by, back into play, and he takes its place landing heavy on the floor with a hard thud. It hurt him, it had to. He tossed regard for himself and quite literally took one for his team, uncaring even for his own body. He wants this more than anything I have ever wanted, and that kind of pure, potent emotion is something shocking to behold. It drives him on.

Ha. Just like Tetsu: putting everything he has to possibly give into the thing he loves, for the people he cares about_ (I kind of regret it, that we never felt the same way as he did back at Teikou. We won for the sake of winning, selfishly. All he ever wanted was to win for something that actually counted. How didn't I see that before?)_ .  
He's still beautiful. He hasn't changed.

Neither has what's between us. Strip away the court, the people, the teams, the sport - and we're left exactly where we were: with a connection _no one_ can touch, or get between.

…Or so I thought.

_**"The one I believe in... Is Kagami-kun."**_

* * *

I lost.

It ached. Burned like acid pooled in the pit of my chest, spreading up my gullet, as I stood there facing their team, the victors, for the first time since I can even remember.

It wasn't just the game I lost either, I realise, as I spot them celebrating together. I lost a life-line I'd been clinging onto in the back of my mind from the very day we split schools.

I'm in love with Kuroko Tetsuya. I guess there's no avoiding that.  
I thought he'd always feel the same, too; no matter what got in the way, the distance and people and circumstances between us. Even when he found his 'new light', I knew I shined _brighter_, I'd be the one he had _most _faith in, regardless of what he said for his team. It was always going to be _me_.

Kagami is holding Tetsu up. He doesn't gloat his victory, he tells me we're going to play again. He's a good sport; a good man, but I look in his eyes and I _hate_ what I see. It makes me want to punch him straight in the fucking face, feel bones cracking under my fist: apologies. It's not apologies for winning, either.

It's an apology for being the one that finally severed the string between Tetsu and I.

I saw the way Tetsu folded into himself mid-game on the bench, hiding a pained expression under his towel, and knew the words I said did that to him. I wasn't sorry, though. What was said on court wouldn't matter when we stepped off in the far future.  
He'd still run back to me.  
I also saw Kagami's resolve set from seeing that -setting _hard_- and I bore witness to the strength that Tetsu - in need and his boundless spirit broken - somehow unlocked from within Kagami, first-hand on the court. He wasn't fighting for a meaningless win of a meaningless game any longer; he was fighting for a real purpose. He was fighting for Kuroko Tetsuya.

And he won.

_...But there's no way in hell I'm ever going to give up._

* * *

**[A/N: Kind of angsty, kind of heartbreaking… Especially to me, since I ship both KagaKuro and AoKuro. _/headdesk._  
I always love the undertones that are able to be picked out from KnB. What's said, but really isn't. Makes for great drabble-juice.  
I really hope you enjoyed this! If you got this far, you deserve to.  
Review to leave your comments if you'd like to! ]**


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